Metrosideros excelsa. POHUTUKAWA, N.Z. CHRISTMAS TREE. New Zealand

MYRTACEAE (Myrtle family)

The New Zealand Christmas tree is widely grown in gardens
in Southern California, especially on the coast, where it puts on a fine display
of red blossoms under conditions of wind and salt spray that are very trying for
other ornamentals. There are several on 19th Avenue, San Francisco. Flowers resembling
eucalyptus flowers come in terminal clusters with masses of red stamens over an
inch long. Leathery oval leaves are shiny above and downy below. One, in the outer
southwest island of the Inner Quad, has been sternly clipped into a round table
top. A relative, M. villosa, is growing in the courtyard of the east
pavilion of the Stanford Hospital. M. collina colonizes lava flows in
Hawaii, where it serves as the island's flower.

Additions/Revisions: Though this identification may invoke skepticism, and no one to our knowledge has ever observed blooms or fruit on this plant, the leaves and branches fit: lower leaf surfaces densely coated with gray, wooly hairs, secondary veins cryptic, branches hairy imparting to the plant a gray-green aspect. The short, felt-like hairs covering the leaves are best observed with a hand lens, as are the many punctate glands, characteristic of leaves of plants of the Myrtaceae.

Name derivation, genus | species Greek metra (heartwood) and sideros (iron), referring to the hardness of the heartwood |